Around here someone stole several miles worth of railroad tracks. You know if you just have a hardhat, orange vest, and a clipboard in your hand, you can pretty much do whatever you please, people will assume you belong there.

nekom:Around here someone stole several miles worth of railroad tracks. You know if you just have a hardhat, orange vest, and a clipboard in your hand, you can pretty much do whatever you please, people will assume you belong there.

nekom:Around here someone stole several miles worth of railroad tracks. You know if you just have a hardhat, orange vest, and a clipboard in your hand, you can pretty much do whatever you please, people will assume you belong there.

That didn't work last month over at Spirits'R'Us, FYI. Luckily I have no priors and got off with a PTI.

nekom:Around here someone stole several miles worth of railroad tracks. You know if you just have a hardhat, orange vest, and a clipboard in your hand, you can pretty much do whatever you please, people will assume you belong there.

Why were you digging a hole in First Avenue?

Well, there's so many holes already in First Avenue we didn't think anyone would notice.

nekom:Around here someone stole several miles worth of railroad tracks. You know if you just have a hardhat, orange vest, and a clipboard in your hand, you can pretty much do whatever you please, people will assume you belong there.

I read a while ago that the steel used in railroad tracks is some of the highest-grade steel made. If they weren't so damned heavy, this would probably happen more often.

Plus, the odds of electrocuting yourself during the theft are much smaller.

nekom:Around here someone stole several miles worth of railroad tracks. You know if you just have a hardhat, orange vest, and a clipboard in your hand, you can pretty much do whatever you please, people will assume you belong there.

There have been several thefts of steel storm drain grates from the side of the interstate around here. People see the vests, and hard hats then don't give it a second thought.

I would like to think it was some hungry family, down on their luck and desperate for cash but the truth is probably the Mexican mafia. The western states have a real problem with them and the problem seems to be growing.

Cybernetic:I read a while ago that the steel used in railroad tracks is some of the highest-grade steel made. If they weren't so damned heavy, this would probably happen more often.

Steel is a structural metal, so "high-grade" doesn't actually work that way: its quality is dependent on very minute variations in composition and on how it's worked, so if you recycle it or even anneal it then it's no better than starting from scratch or using any other scrap steel, which you can get for basically nothing at a scrap-yard. You essentially have to re-tune the carbon content (among other things) of the metal every time it's melted, so unless you actually need the steel type in the tracks for machining it's not worth it.

Copper is mostly used as a conductor, so the sole factor in how good it is is its bulk purity, so you can melt down copper wire and use it to make a copper coffee pot and it'll work just as well, whereas a railroad tie not so much.

Jim_Callahan:Cybernetic: I read a while ago that the steel used in railroad tracks is some of the highest-grade steel made. If they weren't so damned heavy, this would probably happen more often.

Steel is a structural metal, so "high-grade" doesn't actually work that way: its quality is dependent on very minute variations in composition and on how it's worked, so if you recycle it or even anneal it then it's no better than starting from scratch or using any other scrap steel, which you can get for basically nothing at a scrap-yard. You essentially have to re-tune the carbon content (among other things) of the metal every time it's melted, so unless you actually need the steel type in the tracks for machining it's not worth it.

Copper is mostly used as a conductor, so the sole factor in how good it is is its bulk purity, so you can melt down copper wire and use it to make a copper coffee pot and it'll work just as well, whereas a railroad tie not so much.

I wonder how hard it would be to create an alloy of copper that still conducts electricity with a similar impedance, but that can easily be distinguished from the copped used in home and commercial services

have the State and City switch to that, and the only way to recycle it is by being an actual employee of the state

Stealing miles of copper wire is easy, its done all the time here in the UK. Dig a hole to get at the wire and tie it to the end of a van. Dig another hole a mile or two down the road and cut the wire. Drive a mile or so and voila wire out of the ground.

Said before and will say it again:By and large scrappers are thieves and criminals. Not all of them but a very freaking high percentage of them.

I had a couple tons of copper cable stolen from a construction site once. It was inside our locked yard, among all our other construction materials (75 million dollar rail rehab project), still on the spools, just delivered a few days ago.

We found it down the street at the scrap yard when dropping off a load of misc. metal from our site. The cable was still shrink wrapped with the shipping tickets / bills of lading still taped to the side, so it was easy to prove it was ours. Scrapyard guy had the balls to claim "he had no idea it might have been stolen."

Stealing that much is easy... stripping off the insulation is the hard part. "Bright" copper (i.e. hand-stripped) is worth at least twice as much as copper with the insulation still on.

When I was a kid my electrician father used to bring home a truckload of cable tailings at the end of the year, we'd have a huge bonfire and burn the insulation off in an incredibly toxic but spectacularly green conflagration. The results got sold to fund the company christmas party. But even that copper didn't sell for anything near what hand-stripped did.

Who's doing the recycling? Around here, unless you're an established customer with a scrap plant, you go through the wringer with ID to recycle things. I took a handful of hard drives over the other day and had to show ID, leave a finger print, and practically sign away my first born for $4. I can't imagine what would happen if I rolled in with a bunch of wire and a couple of A/C coils.

loonatic112358:I wonder how hard it would be to create an alloy of copper that still conducts electricity with a similar impedance, but that can easily be distinguished from the copped used in home and commercial services

have the State and City switch to that, and the only way to recycle it is by being an actual employee of the state

I like the idea but it would probably be easier to laser emboss the material with the owner's name. Your idea would prevent melting the material but it's not cost effective to bring melted scrap copper, which is a lower class of material, to the the scrap dealer.

I've come to suspect some significant amount of the copper is stolen from public use for private projects. My dad had a 100 amp service run to the detached garage and I'd be willing to bet the electrician did that with stolen or otherwise misappropriated #2 copper. Electricians are, after all, the ones who could safely snag such copper and claim all these "3 foot end cuts" as their vacation bonus.

Satanic_Hamster:Said before and will say it again:By and large scrappers are thieves and criminals. Not all of them but a very freaking high percentage of them.

I had a couple tons of copper cable stolen from a construction site once. It was inside our locked yard, among all our other construction materials (75 million dollar rail rehab project), still on the spools, just delivered a few days ago.

We found it down the street at the scrap yard when dropping off a load of misc. metal from our site. The cable was still shrink wrapped with the shipping tickets / bills of lading still taped to the side, so it was easy to prove it was ours. Scrapyard guy had the balls to claim "he had no idea it might have been stolen."

Scrap yards are every bit as unscrupulous as the theives. It is a well known fact that they turn a blind eye to theft and do only the BARE minimum required by law in terms of reporting anything. The whole business from scrap yards down to the people bringing stuff in, all very shady.

Datadots. Micro printed particles that look like dust, and can be applied to wires, vehicle parts, equipment, etc. by the millions for very little cost. You can coat an entire factory for a couple of hundred dollars. $6 to mark a household's worth of theft-worthy stuff. The dots are micro printed with a serial number, the owner registers the serial number. Detection of the dots is easy with $10 worth of equipment available to scrap buyers and law enforcement.

There are options available to combat this kind of thing. This kind of technology may, of course, be prohibited in Utah under state witchcraft statutes...

Satanic_Hamster:Said before and will say it again:By and large scrappers are thieves and criminals. Not all of them but a very freaking high percentage of them.

I had a couple tons of copper cable stolen from a construction site once. It was inside our locked yard, among all our other construction materials (75 million dollar rail rehab project), still on the spools, just delivered a few days ago.

We found it down the street at the scrap yard when dropping off a load of misc. metal from our site. The cable was still shrink wrapped with the shipping tickets / bills of lading still taped to the side, so it was easy to prove it was ours. Scrapyard guy had the balls to claim "he had no idea it might have been stolen."

Wow, just wow, I would have reported that scrap yard to the police, sounds awful shady. Did you end up getting the wire back?